Wine Investors Turn To Whisky

How would you like to see a bottle you paid 774 dollars for be worth over 11 grand in just two years? Must be a bottle of Bordeaux or Burgundy, right? Nope, it's whisky: Hanyu Ichiro Malt Japanese whisky with the "Ace of Spades" label. Bloomberg recounts this example of whisky prices going through the roof and of folks "flipping" bottles like houses. And there's more: in January Sotheby's sold some Macallan “M” single malt in a 6-liter Lalique decanter for nearly 633,000 dollars.

Did you know there's an Investment Grade Scotch Index? Yeah, seriously! "The top 100 single malts delivered an average return of 440 percent from the start of 2008 till the end of July this year," reveals Bloomberg. (For comparison's sake, the S&P 500 was up 31 percent. The Liv-ex 100 Benchmark Fine Wine Index? Down 2 percent. Talk about sour grapes.)

As one investor, S.K. Yu, told Bloomberg, “My wine portfolio is not doing very well right now so I am diversifying into whisky."

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